I have a friend who is a transsexual. I met him after many years of being a guy, though biologically he was a girl. We would have long conversations, they were fun. But beyond that, the reason they were fun is that he was fast on the pick-up. We would wander from one subject to another, one topic to another, all the while observing our surroundings.
After years of knowing him, he began hormone treatment, testosterone. To the point where he has a beard thicker than mine. Now, we don’t have conversations. He is like a missile. His attention can only be on one thing at a time, and it is never on the moment. He is always fretting about some thing to achieve, a deal there, a chore here. His attention is very difficult to hold. Like in all instances of “attention deficit,” it is not because he has little attention, but because he has a lot of attention on one all consuming thing inside him. He has some goal, some mission. He is attracted in the outside world only by things that reflect the mechanics of obsession and the tools it requires, harsh things, dirty jokes, nice cars, hard riding.
A single minded being.
The point of this is not to say that all men are a certain way, or that all women are a certain way, but that there is a clear chemical difference in how men and women perceive the world. Men aren’t assholes, or they are, but they can’t help it, or it takes a lot of training to help it somewhat.
Women are much more sensitive, which simply means a lot more present. A lot more in the moment. They are aware of a million things at once, they are receptive to their environments. They also don’t project to the future as much.
You can sit with a woman for many hours, and talk about a million things, and nothing be decided. Even if you think it’s decided.
You can sit with a man for a few seconds, share only very slight head movements, not even look in each other’s direction, and be committed to the death to a certain thing.
A woman and a man can be standing in the same room, the woman be aware of a million intricacies of the situation, and the man not find out about a single one.
This is not a cultural thing, it is not a collection of conventions, it is chemical.